Thank you for making this and your other blog posts analyzing published papers free to access. It was previously a bit unfair to initiate these discussions (with a very broad audience, including much of the earthquake science community) in a manner such that the original authors could not publicly respond to your analyses without paid subscriptions (I only became aware of this blog post discussing my paper after it was already behind a paywall!) I would still probably encourage submitting comments to the journal for some of your more critical analyses of recent papers, because the comments section of a blog still doesn't really provide the original authors with an adequate medium to respond.
All that said, now that I've finally had the opportunity to read this blog post, I appreciate your evenhanded discussion of the differences between my paper and the recent Hill et al. paper. You do raise an interesting possibility that the soft sediment deformation observed during Coa-1 and Coa-2 may not strictly require a lake highstand. I've had numerous discussions with Tom Rockwell about the reinterpretation of the stratigraphy, and my opinion is that his reinterpretations are plausible, but not incontrovertible, similar to the stance you take in this post. While re-excavation at the Coachella site would be very interesting (we only had ~2.5 weeks-- a crazy small amount of time for the amount of trench there was to interpret), the massive amount of permitting overhead that is required these days makes it unlikely to be worthwhile if the target is mainly hammering out secondary details. Regardless of which interpretation is correct, it wouldn't move the needle a lot in terms of our understanding of earthquake hazards in the region. While the absence of Lake Cahuilla may well have prolonged the current interval between earthquakes, everyone agrees the next earthquake is likely to happen soon, regardless.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments! I am glad to hear that your thoughts about the analysis are similar to ours. It's great to get your perspective!
Regarding your first paragraph, I'm not sure that "unfair" really applies, at least for the three papers that are themselves behind paywalls - at least our blog posts were free at the time when most people saw our social media comments. Nevertheless we agree that these discussions should be open, and have modified the posts accordingly. (I would note that Substack appears to have a bug that resets the posts to paid every day; I have been resetting it and also added pdf links to the tops of the posts, and am hoping that they respond to my bug report soon!)
We could debate the merits of comment/reply at length; my experience with them has not been positive. I find that editors are typically unwilling to publish comments, and the length restrictions mean that it isn't possible to effectively explain issues. When comments *are* published, the discussion is typically ultra-short-format technical language, and not something that the reader can reasonably assess for themselves. In our posts, we try to make sure that everything is clearly explained so that readers are not just "taking our word" for it but able to make a decision for themselves. I don't think that is something we could achieve with formal comment/reply.
In any case, when I looked into the option of submitting a comment associated with our most recent post, I discovered that it isn't possible, as Nature does not accept comments on papers published >18 months ago. (https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/matters-arising) and furthermore state: "If the submission serves only to identify an important erroror mistake in the published paper, it will usually lead to the publication of a clarification statement (correction or retraction, for example)." I imagine the authors could publish such a clarification statement themselves without our involvement.
I certainly welcome suggestions for how further discussion about these issues could continue in a forum that is publicly accessible and provides adequate space to actually engage. (I do not count the comment section of a paywalled journal as accessible here.) I think it's really important in earthquake science that we figure out how to deal with these issues, since otherwise incorrect results and methods will persist in the literature.
I would note that Kyle and I left our salaried faculty positions last year, so the work we do for the free section of our blog is entirely on our own, unpaid time. (We are lucky that we still have library access for now through a university affiliation, but that is not guaranteed in the long term.) I hope that eventually we can remove the paywall on the whole blog - I'm not sure that the ethical need for people to be able to read about these research papers is higher than for people to be able to read about earthquakes that have affected them. But we are still figuring out how to make this new medium sustainable (for us) and aren't there yet. Maybe in the future we can find some grant funding that would allow us to take down the paywall.
Thanks for your response. I agree the comment/reply sections of journals (especially paywalled journals) aren't necessarily the ideal medium for this kind of debate either. However, it should be noted that most researchers do have access to many of these journals through their institutions, whereas they would have to pay individually (perhaps out of personal funds) to access older posts on your blog. That's the situation I was facing, for example. You and Kyle of course deserve compensation for your work, and it's unfortunate that the current publication ecosystem doesn't provide many avenues for that, but I don't know that having individuals decide whether or not to pay for subscriptions to an individual blog is sustainable. I don't have great answers to these conundrums, but I hope that the general move in the community toward open-access publication may help. I imagine an open access journal such as the new Seismica or Tektonika might adopt fewer limitations on the comment/reply format, such that you could publish one of your blog posts there and the authors could then reply in an equally detailed format. Or maybe a journal purely dedicated to comment/reply on papers published elsewhere could be spun up. In any case, I appreciate reading your blog, but I'm not sure it's worthwhile for me to pay for a subscription, and I'm relieved I don't feel the need to respond in detail to the scientific community about your analysis of my paper, because I'm not sure how I could do that effectively. So that's my 2 cents (or lack thereof... ;) ).
I had some of the same thoughts, which is why we made the posts free to read. :)
I agree that the situation is a bit awkward - although not as awkward, perhaps as having incorrect results in some of our top journals, guiding the direction of earthquake science? If the authors, or anyone else, can find a major flaw in our analyses, we will be happy to publicise just as we did our original analyses in order to correct the record. Our goal is not to attack people, but to explain and in some critical cases correct science, and also to explain to people *why* things are wrong so that the review process can be more effective next time. It would be best for wrong research to be caught early, by the researchers themselves; second best is for it to be caught in the review process. What we are doing is third best (at best!).
I certainly don't want to force people to pay for a subscription. I wonder if, for people who find value in the blog for their research/students, whether it might be possible to use grant funding? Some professional Substacks indicate that this is one way that they are funded. At least back when I had grant funding, $80/year would have been a drop in the bucket, if I could have gotten it through finance.
I fully agree that any claims about earthquake precursors deserve intense scrutiny. I'm certainly not saying you shouldn't publish criticisms of papers when you have them, and hopefully it will encourage further publications (and reviews thereof) that take your analyses into account. However, part of the awkwardness is that your blog isn't peer reviewed, and you two would likewise be the sole arbiters of whether someone found a major flaw in your analyses. That's one reason why an independent comment/reply journal might be a good idea; journal editors are of course somewhat disincentivized to publish comments that call into question papers their journal has accepted, whereas a journal that didn't publish the original work could be a more neutral arbiter.
Re: funding, academics who are fairly flush with research funds and have comparatively few restrictions on how to spend them could undoubtedly pay the subscription. At USGS, we have LOTS of rules about how money can be spent, and there may well be a rule against paying for subscriptions to publications that aren't included in our library contracts-- I haven't looked into it.
Thank you for making this and your other blog posts analyzing published papers free to access. It was previously a bit unfair to initiate these discussions (with a very broad audience, including much of the earthquake science community) in a manner such that the original authors could not publicly respond to your analyses without paid subscriptions (I only became aware of this blog post discussing my paper after it was already behind a paywall!) I would still probably encourage submitting comments to the journal for some of your more critical analyses of recent papers, because the comments section of a blog still doesn't really provide the original authors with an adequate medium to respond.
All that said, now that I've finally had the opportunity to read this blog post, I appreciate your evenhanded discussion of the differences between my paper and the recent Hill et al. paper. You do raise an interesting possibility that the soft sediment deformation observed during Coa-1 and Coa-2 may not strictly require a lake highstand. I've had numerous discussions with Tom Rockwell about the reinterpretation of the stratigraphy, and my opinion is that his reinterpretations are plausible, but not incontrovertible, similar to the stance you take in this post. While re-excavation at the Coachella site would be very interesting (we only had ~2.5 weeks-- a crazy small amount of time for the amount of trench there was to interpret), the massive amount of permitting overhead that is required these days makes it unlikely to be worthwhile if the target is mainly hammering out secondary details. Regardless of which interpretation is correct, it wouldn't move the needle a lot in terms of our understanding of earthquake hazards in the region. While the absence of Lake Cahuilla may well have prolonged the current interval between earthquakes, everyone agrees the next earthquake is likely to happen soon, regardless.
Hi Belle,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments! I am glad to hear that your thoughts about the analysis are similar to ours. It's great to get your perspective!
Regarding your first paragraph, I'm not sure that "unfair" really applies, at least for the three papers that are themselves behind paywalls - at least our blog posts were free at the time when most people saw our social media comments. Nevertheless we agree that these discussions should be open, and have modified the posts accordingly. (I would note that Substack appears to have a bug that resets the posts to paid every day; I have been resetting it and also added pdf links to the tops of the posts, and am hoping that they respond to my bug report soon!)
We could debate the merits of comment/reply at length; my experience with them has not been positive. I find that editors are typically unwilling to publish comments, and the length restrictions mean that it isn't possible to effectively explain issues. When comments *are* published, the discussion is typically ultra-short-format technical language, and not something that the reader can reasonably assess for themselves. In our posts, we try to make sure that everything is clearly explained so that readers are not just "taking our word" for it but able to make a decision for themselves. I don't think that is something we could achieve with formal comment/reply.
In any case, when I looked into the option of submitting a comment associated with our most recent post, I discovered that it isn't possible, as Nature does not accept comments on papers published >18 months ago. (https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/matters-arising) and furthermore state: "If the submission serves only to identify an important erroror mistake in the published paper, it will usually lead to the publication of a clarification statement (correction or retraction, for example)." I imagine the authors could publish such a clarification statement themselves without our involvement.
I certainly welcome suggestions for how further discussion about these issues could continue in a forum that is publicly accessible and provides adequate space to actually engage. (I do not count the comment section of a paywalled journal as accessible here.) I think it's really important in earthquake science that we figure out how to deal with these issues, since otherwise incorrect results and methods will persist in the literature.
I would note that Kyle and I left our salaried faculty positions last year, so the work we do for the free section of our blog is entirely on our own, unpaid time. (We are lucky that we still have library access for now through a university affiliation, but that is not guaranteed in the long term.) I hope that eventually we can remove the paywall on the whole blog - I'm not sure that the ethical need for people to be able to read about these research papers is higher than for people to be able to read about earthquakes that have affected them. But we are still figuring out how to make this new medium sustainable (for us) and aren't there yet. Maybe in the future we can find some grant funding that would allow us to take down the paywall.
Best,
Judith
Hi Judith,
Thanks for your response. I agree the comment/reply sections of journals (especially paywalled journals) aren't necessarily the ideal medium for this kind of debate either. However, it should be noted that most researchers do have access to many of these journals through their institutions, whereas they would have to pay individually (perhaps out of personal funds) to access older posts on your blog. That's the situation I was facing, for example. You and Kyle of course deserve compensation for your work, and it's unfortunate that the current publication ecosystem doesn't provide many avenues for that, but I don't know that having individuals decide whether or not to pay for subscriptions to an individual blog is sustainable. I don't have great answers to these conundrums, but I hope that the general move in the community toward open-access publication may help. I imagine an open access journal such as the new Seismica or Tektonika might adopt fewer limitations on the comment/reply format, such that you could publish one of your blog posts there and the authors could then reply in an equally detailed format. Or maybe a journal purely dedicated to comment/reply on papers published elsewhere could be spun up. In any case, I appreciate reading your blog, but I'm not sure it's worthwhile for me to pay for a subscription, and I'm relieved I don't feel the need to respond in detail to the scientific community about your analysis of my paper, because I'm not sure how I could do that effectively. So that's my 2 cents (or lack thereof... ;) ).
I had some of the same thoughts, which is why we made the posts free to read. :)
I agree that the situation is a bit awkward - although not as awkward, perhaps as having incorrect results in some of our top journals, guiding the direction of earthquake science? If the authors, or anyone else, can find a major flaw in our analyses, we will be happy to publicise just as we did our original analyses in order to correct the record. Our goal is not to attack people, but to explain and in some critical cases correct science, and also to explain to people *why* things are wrong so that the review process can be more effective next time. It would be best for wrong research to be caught early, by the researchers themselves; second best is for it to be caught in the review process. What we are doing is third best (at best!).
I certainly don't want to force people to pay for a subscription. I wonder if, for people who find value in the blog for their research/students, whether it might be possible to use grant funding? Some professional Substacks indicate that this is one way that they are funded. At least back when I had grant funding, $80/year would have been a drop in the bucket, if I could have gotten it through finance.
I fully agree that any claims about earthquake precursors deserve intense scrutiny. I'm certainly not saying you shouldn't publish criticisms of papers when you have them, and hopefully it will encourage further publications (and reviews thereof) that take your analyses into account. However, part of the awkwardness is that your blog isn't peer reviewed, and you two would likewise be the sole arbiters of whether someone found a major flaw in your analyses. That's one reason why an independent comment/reply journal might be a good idea; journal editors are of course somewhat disincentivized to publish comments that call into question papers their journal has accepted, whereas a journal that didn't publish the original work could be a more neutral arbiter.
Re: funding, academics who are fairly flush with research funds and have comparatively few restrictions on how to spend them could undoubtedly pay the subscription. At USGS, we have LOTS of rules about how money can be spent, and there may well be a rule against paying for subscriptions to publications that aren't included in our library contracts-- I haven't looked into it.